A Series of Rooms
by ANOVA Normal
Summary: Following One Day One Room, House and his raped patient follow up. As they begin to just talk, they will try to move on. She and House will try, not to recover, but just to talk. And take things one room at a time.


"How do you think you're life would have been if you weren't in pain?"

"It doesn't matter," he grunted.

"You're you because of what happened to you," she responded guilelessly. "It does matter."

House watched his cane swing back and forth like a pendulum from his arm. The blonde in front of him was hugging her knees on the cold concrete surface of one of the park's tables. The gentle breeze nipped at her free hair. Her eyes were reddened. His own were tired.

"I'd be happier," he said.

She knew him well enough to wait for the quip.

"Then again," House spoke, feigning shock. "Maybe I'd be more depressed. Maybe I'd change my existential views and embrace religion. I could change my ways and rededicate myself to humanity and ensuring the utmost comfort of my patients. Or maybe I'd be exactly as I am now. I can't know and it can't happen ergo, it doesn't matter."

She fell into silence. House watched her shift her jaw from side to side as she did when she was thinking deeply.

"I think I'd be happier," she whispered.

House stared at her with cold blue eyes. "It doesn't matter," he repeated meticulously.

"I was raped!" she snapped.

"Yes," retorted the cripple. "You _were_. It happened. The life you could have led rape-free is over. Your life now is the only one you get. You can be happy or be miserable but you can't be happier over a life you can't lead."

"Then why the hell do we come here every week!" she lashed out furiously.

Whipping her legs off the table, she approached him. His tall figure leaned against a nearby tree trunk. Summer's end had brought with it a cool chill. His blazer clung to his sides tightly. And she approached, hair brought to sky with the wind – An approaching lion.

House rubbed his temples gently. "I'm here because you make me be here!" he grinded frustratingly.

"No!" she spoke again. "Why are we _here?_ Here of all places?"

More frustrated than ever, he pushed himself off the tree trunk and supported his bad leg with his cane as he stood his ground before her.

"Why here?" she asked again, testily now. "At a jogging park? You sit, you watch and you imagine."

"I imagine them," House pointed to a pair of females leisurely jogging by. "I imagine them doing-"

"You imagine yourself as them!" she said with a hint of reproach. "You imagine what it would be like to jog again."

"Yes!" exclaimed the doctor at once. "You've got me! Obviously I'm here not because I'm ducking work and not because it's the farthest place from work but closest to my home. And obviously I'm not here because _you_ asked to meet here."

His sarcasm was quickly overtaken with irritation.

"I know you like the place, that's why," she said quietly with arms crossed.

House didn't say anything. They fell again into silence. House returned to his tree trunk, looking at the glimmers of the nearby lake, the final rays of summer before what would be a long dark snowfall. He felt her eyes watching him but he didn't speak.

She was beginning to really piss him off.

After a while House glanced at his watch, whistling an unfamiliar tune. "2:00," he read. "Which means I've taken my customary 2 hour lunch. Time to go."

House saw her open her mouth slightly but close it. He breathed easy. It would have been hard to hold her tongue if their conversation lasted any longer. She began walking towards her car in the opposite direction.

"See you Wednesday," she called softly.

House watched her leave. "Bye."

The engine of his car and the loud urban workings of traffic and city life helped drown out House's thoughts and imaginations of verbally decimating her until she would finally call it quits and finally leave him alone.

They had been speaking for over a month now. Sometimes they spoke about trivial things. Monster trucks, her dog, the optimal breast to ass ratio and so forth. They even talked about the weather. Other times they didn't talk at all. But more often than not, Gregory House found himself returning to a foul boss with just as foul of an attitude. He had not been having fun these last few weeks.

Then again, it had never been fun, per se. Even his great medical mind couldn't entirely explain it. It was both an obligation and nothing of the sort. It was concern and indifference. It was indulgence and annoyance. Whatever it was, House had been returning to work more fumed than before.

He made his way through the familiar entrances of Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Lisa Cuddy, hands on her hips and a half-exasperated and half utter furious look on her face.

"You're an hour late," she said with daggers. "Again."

"My leg hurt," he responded automatically.

"You drove."

"Well my car hurt too."

"Maybe your pride's going to hurt when I assign you extra clinic hours," spoke the dean of medicine with both an authoritative and ominously threatening voice.

House paused to consider it and then shrugged if off and walked past Cuddy with sheer unconcern. She would not be ignored however and caught up to the hobbles of Doctor House.

"This is serious you know," she warned him. "I can't keep having you just wander off in the middle of the day."

They both entered the elevator.

"I'm doing what you want," House sighed, loudly. "I thought you wanted me to do this, you know, find humanity and all that."

"Yeah, while helping _patients_," emphasized Cuddy. "Patients of this _hospital where you work at_."

"You know," spoke the witty doctor as the elevator slowed. "The longer we continue this conversation, the longer I'm away from my job, the very reason for this nagging conversation."

Lisa Cuddy threw up her hands in exasperation. "Just go do your job House."

House felt once again eyes on him as he entered diagnostics department office. But these three pair of eyes held a curious gaze, one that began around a month ago. Beneath the irritation of waiting over an hour for a lazy boss taking unannounced extended lunches, there was curiosity.

"Seriously House?" sighed Foreman, leaning back in his chair. "Again?"

"Should've been expecting tardiness on my part," replied the head of Diagnostics. "It was in the fine print of your contract."

"We can handle you being late to work or early to leave," spoke Cameron, now on her feet with her arms crossed. "But ducking out in the middle of the day when we have tests to run and differentials to consider is hardly a good allocation of anyone's time."

House looked around confused. "You mean…anyone's time but mine."

Chase piped up. "I think it's good that you're doing this. How is she?"

"She's not going to die in the next 48 hours, unlike our patient unless we find out what's wrong with her," replied House coolly. "Now…who's got any ideas?"

He didn't like the fact that she had come to his office to tell him that she wanted to keep meeting. Mostly he didn't like the fact that his employees were in the next room and had overheard every bit of that conversation. While all were exceedingly interested, each responded differently, in ways that still annoyed House.

It was rare enough for House to treat a patient with no illness, rarer still to engage with the patient and unheard of for House to do a follow up, especially so frequently. Foreman reacted first with shock then indifference before exasperation at House's newfound extended lunches. Chase encouraged and nearly applauded House's apparent humanization. Cameron on the other hand had responded with a cool manner. Perhaps it was, like Foreman, a matter of professional integrity. More likely, as House suspected, jealousy was afoot. It didn't help that House's only recurrent patient was quite pretty.

OOO

"Cuddy's reasonable but she's not going to let this slide forever," confided James Wilson. "Plus your team seems to be more and more upset with you. And your rate of solving cases has dropped. Oh and you've been coming back to work pissed."

"Oh yeah, blame the cripple," was the sarcastic retort.

Wilson touched his fingertips and sighed. "You know, House, when I asked if you were going to follow up with her I didn't mean three times a week on your lunch break plus another hour."

"Rape patients often require a greater deal of handholding and consolatory diatribe. How the time flies." House spoke with signature sardonic tone.

"Why are you doing this again?"

House feigned insult. "How dare you! I'm a doctor."

"She's not sick," Wilson replied. "Not in any way you'd be interested in."

"She's still my patient and I'm still her doctor," House said.

The TV blinked brightly before them. There were a couple empty beer bottles on House's coffee table and a discarded pizza box. The night was late and the two doctors had all but forgotten the television program. Wilson had found a new way to pry at House and House was trying a great deal with a buzz to try and stay his annoying friend's curiosity.

"What do you two even talk about?" Wilson demanded.

"It would bore you," dismissed Greg House.

"Ah," Wilson sighed, chuckling slightly at the thought. "Doctor-patient confidentiality huh? You _are_ taking this seriously."

House shook his head. "Nope. You mistake discretion for nothingness. We…we just talk about...nothing…anything. That's it."

Wilson's eyebrows raised. "And this…talking…it's enough to get under your skin?"

House didn't answer.

Wilson lounged back, sighing as his system began digesting the contents of his dinner. "I thought only I could do that."

House looked at the television blankly. "Me too."

As Wilson dozed off to sleep on House's couch, the diagnostician managed to make his way to his bed where he collapsed. Before he fell unconscious, his mind betrayed him and he looked towards Wednesday with eagerness and dread.

The next day came and went quickly. Glares from Cuddy here, warnings from Wilson there. He suffered through a clinic patient who ached from a discomforted hand. House's advice was not to sleep on it anymore. A new patient had arrived. Tests were ordered, ideas were thrown around and House returned to his office. Everything kept going but House spoke almost with instinct. Few quips, few insults. He was stuck in his own room.

She walked up to him, her signature smile, damaged but sincere. House said nothing but offered her steaming coffee. She accepted it gratefully. Her long sleeves extended past her palms. He wondered if she was hiding something.

"Thanks," she spoke softly.

House nodded. Sometimes he came to the park with an idea what to talk about. And somehow, she always managed to steer the conversation away. He wasn't used to following the conversation rather than leading it. He often wondered how she did it. He couldn't detect the turning point where he ceded control. She spoke gently but with unknown strength. She didn't speak ornately. Her words were candid and blunt. Perhaps that's what frustrated him so. For all his years of sardonic quips and witty responses, he was being taken hostage in a conversation where the only replies were of lesser and humbler character.

"How's…your coffee?" he asked.

"Black."

"Uh huh."

"It's nice out here."

"Not for long. Birds already starting to leave."

"They'll come back."

"Yeah, after they've had a good nice hot holiday down south so they don't have face the brutal winter," was the sarcasm laden response.

"They'd die if they stayed!"

"Fine. Then they're not from the north and migrate south. They're from the south and migrate north. They can't call a place home where they can't handle half the year. At least there will be less pidgeon crap-"

"Your father," she interjected suddenly. "Do you still speak?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Why don't you speak to your raper?" House asked her, coolly.

That silenced her for a moment. "Did you ever love your father?"

House thought deeply. "Maybe. But if so I can't remember it. He wasn't my biological father anyway."

"What?" she demanded, almost urgently. "You never told me that."

The doctor scratched his forehead with his cane. There were more wrinkles than he remembered. "No reason. It's not some melodramatic story. I just realized he wasn't my father. I told him I didn't think I was his son. And we barely spoke after that."

"Was this before or after he became strict and cruel?" she asked softly.

House sighed. "After, I guess."

She leaned back and sipped on her coffee quietly. She appeared to be satisfied by that answer. After a moment, she looked back at House.

"Do you hate him?"

"Enough of this!" House finally exclaimed. "You want to know if it's alright to hate the asshole who raped you. You're not going to learn what's right or just by talking with me."

"I don't want to know the world's justice," she said. "I want to know what's right by you."

Gregory House breathed out of his nostrils, irritated. "Yeah," he spoke at last. "Yeah I hated him."

"Then you did change."

House hit his cane hard against the concrete table. "What do you want from me?" he yelled. "We talk and talk and talk but we don't get anywhere! I can't help you through this! I'm not the right guy. Go talk to a therapist or beat up that punk who did this to you. Or go slit your wrists or open a center for rape victims."

"Then why do you keep coming here to talk if you think it's pointless?" she demanded as strong as House.

He had been asking himself the same question for over three weeks.

She grabbed his wrist. "I _am_ getting somewhere."

"I'm not the guy you should be taking advice from."

"You're hurt. I'm hurt," she accused. "You're the only one who can help me."

"You want hurt?" he demanded, angrily. "Go talk to a veteran who got his leg blown off! Go talk to a mother who lost her kid or a guy who will never move again."

She shook her head violently. "No. Not the same."

"Why the hell not!"

"Because you're still in pain. Because you're hurt and never got better."

She was already running circles around him. He tried to collect his thoughts but was failing. "And why is that good for you?"

Her eyes began reddening. She wiped her face with her sleeve. "Because you never got better but you still talked to me. You keep coming here to see me even though you're still in pain."

House looked at her ludicrously. None of this was making any sense to him. "You _don't_ want to get better?"

"I just want to connect," she spoke.

"I'm a doctor!" he said loudly. "I treat people to make them better! I don't even talk to patients, I have a team I torment, a boss I infuriate and a single friend. Connecting isn't my strong suit!"

"But we've been talking for a month now," she said, a small sad smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

"Yeah," House replied dryly.

He stared off again into the lake.

When had he become so irrational?


End file.
